The result is a blend of high- and lowbrow humor, literature and culture that accomplishes what Anything That Moves and Other Magazine once did: defy categories, bring together communities and expose people to new modes of expression. Much of the series' success results from the well-connected Anders' ability to mix literary luminaries and newly discovered talents...
Not to be overlooked are Anders' innovative author introductions, which stitch together current events and self-commentary. -- San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 11, 2010

WRITERS IN DRAG Cross-drafting is the new cross-dressing as local literary talents show off works they've written
outside of their normal genres. -- Spin Magazine, January 2007

BEST LITERARY DRINKING. Charlie Anders' "Writers With Drinks" continues on, five years strong. What's her secret? Variety! ... You're bound to stay interested if you find
yourself listening to revered children's author Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket) one moment and local comedian W. Kamau Bell the next. Throw in a few cartoonists, sex workers, radio hosts and big-shot authors like Andrew Sean Greer, Vendela Vida and Michelle Tea -- as well as the hostess ... and you've got a seriously (and not so seriously) good time. -- SF Weekly, Best of San Francisco 2006

What happens when you throw two science fiction writers, a sketch comedy troupe, a poet, a memoirist, and a 'fetish diva' in a room together and ply them with booze? Even host, founder, and Choir Boy author Charlie Anders can't say for sure, but her monthly events -- half salon, half reading -- are never boring. -- SF Flavorpill, issue 188

BEST LITERARY NIGHT. Writers with drinks are writers ready to meet the world, and when our readers have a hankering to see these often spectacular mismatches, they turn (yes!) to Writers With Drinks -- a kind of roving public salon and reading series -- to put drinks in writers' hands and thrust them onstage to bring their works to life. For those who equate literary with stuffy, WWD will come as a plesantly relaxed surprise. -- San Francisco Bay Guardian, Best of the Bay, Readers Poll 2005

Literary ringmaster Charlie Anders insists her series of tavern-based readings is set up so that "no one's competing," but she herself is used to being up against stiff competition.
"There's a guy doing a striptease on a unicycle, a guy wrestling a fish and Armistead Maupin doing a reading," she says incredulously of the options on any given Saturday night in SF. "Your [event] has to be better than fish wrestling." It's a tough standard to live up to, but over the last four years Writers With Drinks: Spoken Word Varity Show has become the event that everybody's talking about  and talking at, for that matter. Snagging appearances by big- and small-name poets, comedians and authors, Anders also strives to keep the audience diverse... According to Anders: "You can get drunk, take someone home and wake up unable to remember who you slept with  but you'll remember the readings. That's my goal." -- 7x7 Magazine, April 2005

OK, so a stand-up comic, a literary agent, a hostage negotiator, a sex worker and a KALW radio current-affairs personality walk into a bar .... No, this isn't an off-color joke, it's Writers with Drinks, the spoken-word variety show that mixes genres, styles and cocktails, back again with a more-eclectic-than-usual concoction. Hosted by the incisive and very connected writer Charlie Anders, the monthly series celebrates writers from every corner of the literary world, as well as pundits and comedians and a few other sundry performers and intellectuals. -- SFGate.com's Epicks, Jan. 7, 2005

BEST LITERARY NIGHT. Where would we be without writers? And where would writers be without their drinks? For answers, our readers recommend delving into the fascinating, sometimes frightening world of Writers with Drinks' monthly "Spoken Word Variety Show." A veritable literary frenzy, Writers with Drinks nights consistently feature an eclectic mix of writers expounding on a vast array of topics, in genres ranging from erotica to poetry to science fiction. -- San Franciso Bay Guardian, Best of the Bay, Readers Poll 2004

The secret to a good variety show doesn't solely rest on the shoulders of the individual acts themselves, but, rather, in the force that keeps the show moving ahead. Charlie Anders, who is often called upon to emcee others' events due to the sheer cleverness and savoir faire that roll off her like a demure tsunami, steered the barge for her own monthly series Writers with Drinks last Sunday at the Makeout Room. There's something about a lanky genderfudger (coining a term here, due to language issues) in a tutu at dusk that puts the wheels in motion for good times. -- SFGate.com, "Buzz Town," June 23

"BEST REASON TO CELEBRATE. When six ink-stained wretches -- whose writings cover every topic from journalism to erotica -- come together to read their own work, a stimulating brand of mayhem is bound to ensue. Whether your tastes run toward literary prose, poetry, comedy, romance, mystery or even science fiction, this reading series/variety show lives up to its name... With an emcee who tops off the proceedings with off-kilter jokes and fanciful bios of the participants, the thought-provoking banter and persiflage are a welcome departure from all the stale entertainment options out there." -- Improper Bostonian Magazine, "Best of Boston" issue.

"To benefit other magazine, [Charlie Anders produces] literary events called Writers with Drinks--bibulous, variety-show-style readings that brought together authors from disparate literary genres like science fiction, erotica, slam poetry, and romance writing together for one night to share the stage. 'Ideally, [Writers with Drinks] would show how all these different genres have a lot in common, how each one is really using words to try to evoke a response, but at the same time, celebrate the differences between them.'" -- Boston Phoenix, Nov. 14-20 2003 issue.

"'Writers With Drinks' is a hell of a good idea -- there isn't an author on the planet wh wouldn't be a bit more tolerable if the audience, not to mention the author, had knocked back a few." -- The Boston Phoenix, August 29, 2003

"Ultimately, the evening had not really been about books or book sales, but about stage performance. Like the rest of the audience, I had been amply entertained. Even with my unopened book carton in tow, I didn't feel like a frustrated Tupperware lady. I felt like someone who'd been a part, albeit a dull part, of something just a little ground breaking in Cambridge." -- Jan Brogan, Boston Globe, April 20, 2003

"OKAY, first of all, Writers With Drinks is the best name for a reading series in a long, long time. Second, its mission, to throw together a range of writers who under other circumstances would never share a stage, is highly laudable. Too many readings are so boring because the readers all drone the same kind of work; at least this one promises to be unpredictable. Third, it's honchoed and hosted by San Francisco's Charlie Anders ... who's a very funny character." -- The New York Press, Sept. 15, 2002

A chill wind was already sweeping down upon Juneteenth and North Beach Festival revelers alike; the indoor Writers With Drinks benefit for not- yet-launched Other Magazine seemed like a sensible alternative. It was warm enough inside that event co-organizer and emcee Charlie Anders was wearing a strapless, flounce-skirted '80s cocktail dress that only she or Joan Collins could truly have carried off. So what is Other Magazine? "It's a magazine for people and ideas who are outside categories," said Bay Guardian columnist Annalee Newitz. Hence, a program that included Cory Doctorow's science fiction, Lynn Breedlove's sex'n'drugs'n'bike couriering novel "Godspeed," and Newitz's own musings on Web-based fan-fic. -- Laurel Wellman, SF Chronicle, June 18, 2002

"Liquid courage: Add a little locution to your evening at 'Writers with Drinks,' an event that promises spoken word, erotica, comedy, poetry, and, most intriguingly, "rants" by local literary and performing luminaries. Get Saturday night rolling with words of wisdom, wisecracks, and maybe even some verbal abuse." -- San Francisco Bay Guardian,
Jan. 9, 2002.

Cost: $5 to $20, no-one turned away
All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make Out Room 3225 22nd St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM.

Saturday, Sept. 8, 2018:

Jane Smiley (Golden Age, Moo, A Thousand Acres)
R.O. Kwon (The Incendiaries: A Novel)
Maria Dahvana Headley (The Mere Wife: A Novel)
Barbara Jane Reyes (Invocation to Daughters)
Courtenay Harmeister (Okay Fine Whatever: The Year I Went from Being Afraid of Everything to Only Being Afraid of Most Things)

Cost: $5 to $20, no-one turned away
All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make Out Room 3225 22nd St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM.

Cost: $5 to $20, no-one turned away
All proceeds benefit Westside's AIDS Case Management Program, AND the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make Out Room 3225 22nd St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM.

At San Jose Ballroom Salons IV-VI, the San Jose Marriott, Nebula Weekend

Saturday, June 14, 2014:

Daniel H. Wilson (Robogenesis, Robopocalypse, How to Survive a Robot Uprising)
Mimi Lipson (The Cloud of Unknowing)
Adam Rogers (Proof: The Science of Booze)
Jordan Ellenberg (How Not to Be Wrong: The Power of Mathematical Thinking)
Kendra De Colo (Thieves in the Afterlife: Poems)
Sampson (That Bitch Better Be Funny)

Cost: $5 to $10, no-one turned away
All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM.

Saturday, December 11, 2010:

Kirk Read (How I Learned To Snap, This Is The Thing)
Thea Hillman (For Lack of a Better Word)
Cara Black (Murder in the Palais Royal)
Mir Tamim Ansary (Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes)
With Guest Host Daphne Gottlieb (Kissing Dead Girls!)

All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 6:30 PM.

All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

Saturday, May 9, 2009:

Erika Lopez (Hoochie Mama: The Other White Meat)
Achy Obejas (Days Of Awe, We Came All The Way From Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?)
Daniel Marcus (Binding Energy, Burn Rate)
Sean Keane (Habitat For Humanity Comedy Show)
Richard Loranger (Poems For Teeth)
Brian Castro (Birds Of Passage, Stepper)

All proceeds benefit the Center for Sex and Culture.
At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.

Jon Longhi (Wake Up And Smell The Beer, Rise and Fall of Third Leg)
Tamim Ansary (West of Kabul, East of New York: An Afghan American Story)
Julie Gamberg (Red River Review, California Poets in the Schools)
Jen Collins (Best Fetish Erotica, Best Bi Women's Erotica)
W. Kamau Bell (The Punchline, Get It!?)
Michaela Roessner (The Stars Compel, The Stars Dispose)

At The Make-Out Room 3225 22nd. St., San Francisco CA, from 7:30 PM to 9:30 PM, doors open at 7 PM.